The Tragedy of the Ploughman and the Flower
by Fammi Capire
Summary: A story based on an old Northumbrian ballad of love, separation, and loss.
1. An Introduction

The Tragedy of the Ploughman and the Flower

A brief introduction to the story form the author:

This story is entirely AU and OOC. It was an exercise to fuel my own imagination and to try to get as close as I possibly could to the story in order to better understand it. I believe that there will be 13 chapters in total, and I expect that every chapter will be generally pretty short, but that has yet to be decided. I am keeping the rating as "M" for now - it's a seriously creepy story. I may change it to "T" later on.

It is directly based on an old Northumbrian legend that I have done extensive research on in the last 2 years. The legend itself I happened across entirely by coincidence when one night I had a dream that I needed to go pick flowers in Bedlington (I am not even kidding). It was one of the most vivid dreams I have ever had, and I ended up looking up "flowers" and "Bedlington" online. I then happened across legend itself and the rest, as they say, it history. It can be found under several different titles: "The Flower of Bedlington," "A Bedlington Legend," "Bedlington Tragedy," or "The Ploughman and the Flower."

I have spent the last two years learning all I possibly could about this legend, I even found the book in which the verse was published for the first time. The earliest traces I can find of the legend are in the form of a ballad, though I'm sure that the story itself existed way longer than that. I have yet to find the tune (if it even still exists) and while we have the entire story, the version still in verse is missing the entire end.

The young girl and her family are never named in any of the versions I have found thus far. The young ploughman, however does have a name. In some versions he does remain unnamed, but in others his name is James Robson. This got me really thinking about who in the Harry Potter cannon I wanted to have act these characters. Naturally, I always want my OTP, Snape and Hermione step in. However, the story itself gave me a different idea: The young man's name was James and the girl is referred to as "the flower;" James Potter and Lily Evans. Perfect, right?

And then I spent several days being conflicted about whether to use my OTP or to use the characters that would perfectly fit the descriptions. So, because of guidelines, I will only be posting the OTP version. I do have the duplicate version with Lily and James, and if you'd like to read that one, please let me know.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this story! (And if you've actually heard of the legend, or know a variation of it, please message me! I want to get all the information about it that I possibly can!)


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

A long time ago, in the quiet little town of Bedlington, a man and his wife lived in a beautiful manor house that had been in the husband's family (the illustrious Granger family) for years and years. As far back as anybody could remember, they had lived there. They had been there even before the church in the center of town had begun to keep records. Generations of Grangers came and went, but the house always stood, ready to shelter them and witness the highs and lows of their lives, to see the children of each generation born, raised, married, bringing children of their own into the world, and then passing that same house to their offspring upon the time of their demise.

To say that the Grangers were a fixture of the town would be a gross understatement. At times it felt to some of the younger town citizens that the family must have simply appeared in Bedlington on the day the earth was made.

That being said, nobody knew exactly _why_ the Granger family was so rich. Their manor was beautiful, the property sprawled across the stunning countryside, they had the world in the palms of their hands. And yet, nobody in town ever did business with them, and they would have known if a foreigner came into town to do business with the Granger family, for the town of Bedlington was as rich a rumor mill as one can find anywhere in the world. So, for the sake of simplicity and not causing everybody another headache at the hands on one of Bedlington's age old conundrums, the town's people decided to believe that the Granger family was simply _intrinsically_ rich.

But the history of the family is not the important part of this story. We must focus on the current Lord and Lady Granger. While it seemed to the outside world that wife and husband had everything that they could ever want, the truth was that they lacked the thing that both of them wanted most in the world:

A child of their own.

The towns people were definitely smart enough to realize that the man who ruled the area did not have an heir, they could never have guessed how much this affected the husband and wife. What the people did not know was that Lady Granger had fallen pregnant several times in the fifteen years that they had been married, but she had lost each of the pregnancies before four months had passed.

It broke her heart to not be able to provide her beloved husband with an heir and the child he had always wanted, and likewise it broke Lord Granger's heart to witness the physical pain and emotional pain that his beloved wife suffered because she was not able to carry a child.

Theirs had been a marriage of convenience: Their parents had arranged the union, but as they got to know each other the could not help but fall madly and hopelessly in love. It seemed that with each day that passed they loved each other even more than the day before. It was truly lucky that they faired so well in their situation; the kind of love that everyone hopes for and dreams about, but so few actually find.

The towns people were all blissfully unaware of this part of the Lord and Lady's lives. While the family had always been a prominent part of the town and its history, they never intermingled with the towns folk in any way, shape, or form. They seemed to believe themselves to be above everybody else. They even came off as being greedy. They never shared their fortune, nor did they never help those who were in need, or those who had fallen on hard times. None of the folk had even seen a servant caring for the property itself. And yet, the grounds remained immaculate. It was almost as if they were cared for by magic.

But this was just a fact of life in Bedlington: Nobody in town would ever approach the Granger family. Those who had lived there a long time just knew this (probably from long lost stories that nobody could ever remember the details of that had been passed down from generations past). There were sometimes new people who arrived at the town and who either did not heed the warnings that the town's citizens gave them, or who simply had not heard about the Granger family, who would try to implore the Lord and Lady for any assistance they could give. It never worked.

Despite the fact that the manor and the family were the oldest and most prominent fixture of the area, they were constantly shrouded in a veil of mystery.


End file.
